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Thursday, February 5, 2009

Brokenness, Hope and Women!!! - REVISTED.....

I have been having many conversations about the financial markets being broken, the economy being broken, corporate business models being broken, corporate diversity programs being broken.... I went back and read this piece I wrote in DECEMBER ( on Huffington Post)- a piece of which is below... I want to put it back out there as a framework to what could be different the next time around....

"So much has to change in order for ours to be a more just and equitable world, and that change must occur in all levels of society for it to be sustainable. This theory of change is well summarized in the work of the Women's Funding Network which argues that "a bottom up belief that the whole community cannot be improved or changed without the full participation of women and girls and the full participation of women and girls cannot be achieved without bringing women and girls from the margins in to the mainstream."

We can talk about new appointments and new administrations, but it is in valuing men and women, boys and girls equally and in enabling their full participation in society, that we will set the course for the positive change we need to see in our families and our public and private institutions.

In Washington, as we witness this changing of the guard and hope that better decisions will be made, let us drive change elsewhere, in all realms of our society, from where we each stand. Where leadership is not diverse, strive it make it so. Where the culture is toxic, commit to changing it. Where talent is being underutilized, develop programs to change that. The solutions are there but what is missing, often, is the will, the commitment, to see such change through. What is missing is the equitable participation of women as solutions are being enacted. This is the message I delivered yesterday to over 200 women and if you can pull together a group of 200 interested men, call me, and I will deliver the message to them too. This is a world view when good men and good men both win. Do you see a broken world? If yes, then begin to see the world differently and then move forward to make the world different. Invest in women and girls. The time for real change is now."